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MUSHROOMS (a la Bordelais)
Proceed in all respects as for grilled mushrooms, but serve with a sauce of oil or melted butter, in which are minced young onions, parsley, and a little garlic; or serve with a sauce made by boiling the trimmings of the mushrooms in good brown gravy, seasoned with cayenne pepper and salt, and thickened with the yolks of eggs. Time to broil, about twelve minutes; to bake, fifteen to twenty minutes.
A short variation entry that assumes you have already read the grilled mushroom recipe it points back to. The whole dish turns on the sauce, and on not overcooking the caps.
- What "as for grilled mushrooms" meansThe method itself is not given here and has to be read from the grilled mushroom entry; broadly, large flat caps with stems trimmed, brushed generously with oil or butter and seasoned. Under a modern broiler set high, or on a grill pan, 4-6 minutes a side may be plenty; the twelve minutes given here suits a coal grill at a distance and can dry out a cap under an electric element.
- Baking insteadThe book gives no oven temperature. Fifteen to twenty minutes would suit a hot oven, in the region of 400-425F, with the caps buttered and in a shallow dish. Large portabellos hold up well; smaller caps may be done in ten.
- The oil sauceThis is the better of the two and needs no cooking: warm oil or melted butter with finely minced spring onion, parsley and a very small amount of garlic, spooned over at the table. Roughly 4 tablespoons fat, 2 tablespoons parsley, 1 spring onion and half a clove of garlic serves four.
- The gravy sauce"good brown gravy" here most likely means a made brown sauce or a well-reduced brown stock rather than thin drippings from a roast, though the recipe does not specify. A well-reduced beef or veal stock does the job; a cup is enough for four.
- Egg yolk thickeningThe hinge of the second sauce. Whisk two yolks with a little of the hot gravy to temper, return to the pan off the heat, and hold it below a simmer while it thickens. Any boil and it curdles into threads.
- TrimmingsThe stems and peelings are the flavour base for that sauce, so keep them when you trim. Simmer them in the gravy for ten minutes, then strain them out before thickening.
- CayenneCayenne is called for here as a seasoning in small quantity rather than to make the sauce hot. A pinch, tasted as you go.
- YieldTwo to three large caps per person as a savoury course or vegetable side; four large mushrooms will serve two generously, though the sauce quantities suggested above are scaled for four.
"A la Bordelaise" in nineteenth-century French kitchen usage covered several unrelated things -- a red wine and marrow sauce, a garnish of ceps, and the shallot-or-onion, parsley and garlic mixture in oil seen here, associated with the cooking of Bordeaux and the Gironde. The mushroom version reflects the region's long association with wild ceps, which were commonly grilled and dressed with oil, garlic and persillade rather than cooked in cream. Cassell's, compiled as an alphabetical dictionary rather than a narrative cookbook, routinely handles variations this way: a full method appears once under the plain form of a dish, and the regional treatments follow as cross-referenced paragraphs that give only what changes.